THE STORY
Photo : Lisa Hornak , UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism .
DIGGING DEEP
A legendary reporter looks back .
BY JARRETT HALEY
LOWELL BERGMAN never really set out to be a journalist , yet San Diego in the late-60s led him down that path . As a graduate doctoral fellow studying under Professor Herbert Marcuse , Bergman and Marcuse ’ s graduate students soon found themselves de facto bodyguards for the philosopher , who was targeted for dismissal by state officials and violence by vigilantes . Those students would ultimately create the San Diego Free Press , an alternative newspaper where Bergman applied his research skills to public records investigation and deepdives into all manner of malfeasance . He ’ s been an investigative reporter ever since , working with news outlets like ABC , CBS News , 60 Minutes , the New York Times and Frontline .
While he ’ s tangled with government and corporate interests , organized crime , arms and drug traffickers as well as foreign regimes , he ’ s also taught the next generation of reporters at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley , where he founded its acclaimed Investigative Reporting Program and is now a professor emeritus . After his most recent project , Turning Point : 9 / 11 and the War on Terror on Netflix , we asked him for highlights from a long career spent looking deeper :
Taxicab Controversy
One of his first forays into investigative journalism , Bergman and the San Diego Free Press revealed the financial origins of the area ’ s most powerful people and uncovered evidence of taxicab cash buying favors from local officials and city departments . “ Just by publishing public record information — no great new ‘ scoop ’ in itself ,” Bergman says , “ we started to shake things up .”
Up In Smoke
“ I wasn ’ t looking for a story that would take me to the outer limits of what you could get on 60 Minutes ,” says Bergman . But leaked documents from the tobacco industry led to an exposé that created upheaval at 60 Minutes and led Bergman to leave the program after 14 years . The full saga of the story was the basis for the 1999 film The Insider , with Al Pacino portraying Bergman .
46 TRITON | WINTER 2022